Signal strength last night was rated 'fair'.
Fair to whom?
Not to this poor bugger that's for sure.

Net result (yeah; bad pun, I know,) I couldn't receive all my e-mails, only five got through, (which resulted in a flood of fourteen when I clicked on just now,) nor could I access the CHR nor Maverick sites...technology!
Bah!

So here's yesterday first...I've yet to write today's:

Tuesday 1st September/

Got away about 8:20, the theory being that we’d be moving contra to the rush hour traffic.
Good theory; but it didn’t work…the first ten to fifteen miles were dead slow.
But we trucked on and eventually got to Bowling Green and the Corvette Museum.
If I were to win Lotto to-morrow it would be my ultimate dream to buy an early sixties Corvette (the really good looking ones,) chop the boot (trunk) out of it and build a rough-as-guts 6 x 1 wooden stake-board deck in it.
Thereby upsetting the most people for the least possible effort.
Although I can appreciate fine machinery, the GM design team sorta lost the plot with later models…with their sloping snouts they make me think of a pregnant shark.
(Ducks for cover right here…)
But I did enjoy the museum, it’s well done, well displayed, and well explained.
Top marks; and recommended even if you’re not a Corvette nut.

I noticed on the way out here that pretty well all of the farms were cropping, with very little livestock apparent. And most animals I saw were miniature horses.
What’s the point?
They’re too small to ride, too small to race, they don’t produce milk or wool…and there’s not much to them to eat either.

Kept on trucking to Mammoth Caverns National Park.
Unfortunately we hadn’t taken into account that we would cross a time zone around here, making it impractical for us to do any ‘at length’ exploring of what was on offer.
The times the tours departed, and the time they took just didn’t fit.
Bugger!
But what we did get to see was still pretty impressive.
(Whilst here I picked up a little felt mouse, about five inches long, in the gift shop, under the watchful eye of the attendant and held it with the tips of my fingers in the palm of my right hand, stroking it with my left hand.
“Frisky little critters,” I said, “you’ve got to keep a good hold on these.”
If you hold them thusly, when you snap your right fingers shut, the critter shoots up your arm, your left hand hiding the action of your right.
So that’s what I did.
She jumped as if she’d been shot!
Then started to laugh when I did it again.
“Very clever,” she said, “very clever.”
I’ll bet she practised that move as soon as I’d walked out.)

I’d noticed on the way in to the caves that the bush was all second growth; but with very little undergrowth…what I’d noted was correct as we found out at the caves.
Most of this area was requisitioned by the Govt to form the park, and had been cleared and farmed at one stage; that explained the second growth.
The lack of undergrowth was explained as we were driving out…I noticed deer…yep; they’ll browse it out alright; there’s very little undergrowth where there’s deer about.
Bloody vermin…as bad as possums for destructiveness.

So…head for Elizabethtown, and Swope’s Auto Museum…we’ve got about an hour up our sleeves.
And couldn’t find the place.
(Seems we didn’t go far enough.)

We drove through some quite extensive roadworks on our way to Elizabethtown; and a couple of things intrigued me: along the sides of the cuttings, every eighteen to twenty inches, through some very tough rock were what looked like exposed slightly off-vertical shot-holes…that had obviously never been fired.
What’s the reasoning behind that?
Are they to guide the digger operator? Or to make it easier for him to rip the rock apart?
It’s got me fooled.
The other thing…what on earth are they spreading on the easier contours?
Turns out it was big round hay bales spread from top to bottom of the grade, pinned in place, and then sprayed with what appears to be a papier-mâché coating of paper and grass seed.
What a good idea.
That would help control erosion, and also give the grasses something to help them get established.)

Ah well…look for a Super 8 instead.
And bloody terrible internet. I can receive mail…but that’s it. No surfing of sites.

Disclaimer: be aware that the views and the opinions expressed by the author of this missive are bloody good ones.